Unhurried,

the evening exhales.

 

Cool breath

extinguishing light,

subduing hues to make night.

 

Prickly pears dim their shine

and darken their juice.

Ruby fruits wait in shade

like puckered lips.

 

Wife sinks,

knees tucked,

crouches weary,

arms heavy.

Chin dips,

skin raw,

tear trails puckered,

eyes sore.

 

She slips into an empty calm.

The breezeblocks are warm.

 

And hunched near, a stout package of Mexican

is cached in a target as red as his hot blood.

His face is a polished coffee bean,

his nose chiselled and planed by ancestry.

They hate him for it.

 

 

His hat catches rain and keeps the blaze at bay;

it looks like brown paper or dry bread.

He wishes it was the lid to a jar

and he was a jalapeno.

If he ducked down…

nearly.

 

Lumpy as a swaddled, knuckled fist,

he is bunched for fear, not fight,

and hugs himself, not his wife.

 

He listens.

He hears.

His eyes are wary.

 

They are near.